Title: For the Love of Samuel

Author: RP Andrews

Publisher: Self-Published

Release Date: 11/20/2017

Heat Level: 5 - Erotica

Pairing: Male/Male, Male/Male Menage

Length: 50,500

Genre: Romance, Erotica, Fantasy, erotic gay romance, erotic gay fiction

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Synopsis

New Yorker and aging gay man Billy Veleber who abhors growing old has lost Jim, his former meth head lover, to his habit, and Gus, the older man in his life and mentor, to despair, when he is confronted with the chance to become 21 all over again, through the magical prowess of the dog tag of a long dead Civil War soldier, Samuel Evans. Young again, Billy abandons Manhattan for Fort Lauderdale where he meets Dare, the love of his life, whose clever quick rich venture first bonds them, then threatens to end their idyllic lives together forever. Billy also faces the reality of having to tell Dare the truth about himself.

Excerpt

Billy Veleber, a 51 year old aging gay mam living in Manhattan, after a number of heartbreaks, decides to put on the dog tag of a Civil soldier given to him by Travis, a clerk in a thrift shop in Boystown, Chicago, who tells him it will give him eternal youth if he has had or has love in his life. The dog tag had been handed down for generations since it was given to Walt Whitman by a dying soldier he nursed in the Washington, D.C., Armory Hospital in 1862. Over the intervening weekend, Billy begins his transformation to 21, the same age as the soldier, Samuel Evans, whose dog tag he wears, died ...

I leave the baths around five, and after a coma nap, a quick Smart Choice Fettuccini Alfredo 400 calorie dinner and a good hot shower - I notice with cocky satisfaction in the bedroom’s full length mirror that my love handles are history, my stomach is flatter, my receding hairline is unreceding, and most of the gray on my head and in my beard and and on - yes! - my chest is going or gone, I head over in my leather vest, no shirt, and levis and boots for The New Eagle off Tenth Avenue. It’s almost one - a.m. - but as one of my fuck buddies before Gus and even Jim, said, “That's when they stop window shopping.”

Now it’s called The New Eagle because the old Eagle, along with the Spike and the Lure, the leather triumvirate of my youth and my years with Gus, were gone. They had become the victims of the real estate boom at the turn of the millennium, and had been brutally and sacrilegiously torn down for shiny, gleaming condos and spankingly clean baby carriages.

In the crappy bathroom at the Spike they had stenciled on the black wall in cheap white paint, “Don't flush for piss.” That said it all. I only hoped some gay historians had saved that piece of the wall before it too became history. Now all we have left is the hole on Tenth Avenue, what us hardcore leathermen sarcastically brand as Genuine “Vi-nel.”

I strut in, my goose-step no longer adopted but my own, and find the same Chatty Cathy cliques - different faces, same old shit - going on like the last time I was here with Gus just after we’d gotten back from our first class holiday excursion to Athens and Rome and a few weeks before his stroke.

In between the groupies are some of the oldest members of our clan, The Old Guard, usually alone because most of their cronies are already dead, and usually with enough keys hanging from their belts to rival a night watchman at the Chrysler Building, the fucken handkerchiefs hanging from their pockets, so Twentieth Century, or the best of them in faded, stretched out jock straps that should be on Antiques Road Show along with their owners. Yea it’s true, the older some of these guys got, the less they wore. For attention I guess.

Admired or ridiculed, it doesn't matter; the greatest sin is to be ignored.

I order my nine dollar screwdriver with fifteen cents of vodka in it, and head up the stairs to the second level where just a year before Gus and I had had our leather marriage ceremony.

As I’m going up the stairs some twink in a super short Tux jacket, Bermuda shorts and floppies and one of those Abe Lincoln top hats - I guess he thinks he’s in the Garment District because anywhere else he’d be tire-ironed - and his angelic girl friend, a vision in pink, dressed in a fluffy chiffon skirt, low cut blouse and sneakers, are waltzing down the stairs. They give a funny stare but I stare them right back.

“You,” say I, pointing to the bitch, “don't belong here.”

“You can't discriminate against us, fucker,” replies her boyfriend who sounds like he shoots up with estrogen in the morning.

I give him a frumpy look back. Yea, buddy you’re right. The days when a leather bar could stop you from coming in if you weren't dressed “in code” are over. With the leather scene fading faster than an Atlantic City “Wish You Were Here” postcard, it's all about selling the liquor.

Period.

There's less people upstairs, the same Chatty Cathy shit going on or guys on their fucken phones GPSing you but never making a move beyond that, when I see HIM.

He’s tall but not too tall, hairy but not a gorilla like me, older but not old, with an open leather camouflage vest showing a tight, lightly furry chest and six pack out of one of Men’s Fitness cover stories, “Dynamite Abs in Just Six Weeks!”, a scrawny beard and face of a felon who did hard labor, and leather gloves and biker’s cap to complete the whole Neo-Nazi look.

Plus a pair of furry, honey melon buns deliciously hanging from his chaps begging to be tongued.

Fuck!

He’s standing at the other end of the bar, surrounded by clones though he is far and away the pick of the litter. I lock my eyes on him like a laser for a good ten minutes but I get hardly a glance.

Now in the old days before Jim and Gus when I was free as a bird but as timid as a spinster, I would have just moved on. Oh, but this was the new Billy, the ballsy Billy. I walk over and stand two feet away from Mr. Hot Shit and his court jesters and just keep staring.

Finally I get his attention.

“You got a problem, bud?” he says returning the stare of a killer. His cronies do the same.

“Well, I've been cruising you for at least ten minutes now and I didn't even get a fart back.”

“And…”

“So what are you looking for, some fem, or fat boy, or maybe some tough guy with whips, chains and razors hanging from his belt?”

His buddies begin to little girl giggle, but not a muscle moves in Hotshit’s Stone Mountain face.

“I’m not into watching your pubic hairs grow in, buddy.”

“How old do you think I am?”

“Thirty, thirty two maybe.”

Fuck, dude, I’d suck your dick all night just for that. But I continue to play it cool.

“So you get your kicks changing some old man’s Depends, I guess.”

Now Hotshit is the only one that's laughing.

“Okay, smart ass, buy me a beer.”

He follows me to the bar and after collecting our beers, we move to the other side and sit down on the wood bleachers.

“I gotta tell you buddy -”

“Billy, name’s Billy.”

“Hank, in from LA. Hell, Billy, you're the first guy I've met in a long time that’s got balls for real.”

“Hey, I know what I want, so why waste one another's time?”

“And you want me?”

“If you can deal with all this.” I glide my hand over the fur on my chest and abs when Hank puts his hand over mine and pushes it further down to my crotch.

And squeezes.

“I dig the fur big time. And most younger guys are so used to deleting and blocking everybody, they don't know how to talk, Christ, they don't know how to fart in public. But you - you sound pretty mature for a kid old enough to be my son.”

“You don't have to be old to have your shit together.”

Hank raises his razor chin. “So how old do you think I am, stud?”

Now with that hard core felon face, I took him for fifty but PR taught me to tell people what they wanna hear.

“Forty.”

“Good answer,” he replies. “I’m 46.”

“l just threw a guy out younger than you," I say smugly.

“Oh?”

“High maintenance. Wanted it all the time. Hey, what do I look like, some fucking machine?”

“You must be pretty tough.” He smiles for the first time since we connected, a tough guy’s, controlled, but a smile nonetheless.

“Yea, I’m a trust fund baby, do what I wanna do, when I wanna do it, with whoever I wanna do it with.”

It’s refreshing to create whatever past the moment calls for when you know, chances are, you'll never see the guy again.

“And you?” I ask. “You're not one of these aging hotties who live off those of us with money are you?” This time I place my hand on his chest, rubbing it slowly back and forth from nipple to nipple. He’s got a nice succulent set.

“You know something,” with his own smart ass grin. “I’m going to really enjoy hearing you howl while I fuck you.”

I get up, pat my ass for his benefit, then sit down again.

“This ain't yours yet.”

“Okay, fair enough.” He takes my hand, places it on his crotch, a respectable bulge at that. “I’m a set designer in Hollyweird, between gigs which is why I decided go visit New York and see some old buddies …”

“...who you're free loading off of.”

“If you mean, I’m staying with one of them the answer is yes.”

“Current trans-coastal lover, present or former fuck buddy, auditioning sugar daddy, which is it?”

“None of the above. Just a buddy’s couch and a lumpy one at that.”

“Well then, that makes it easy.” I get down off the bleachers and wait for him to follow. He does.

“Remember.” He taps on the chrome and leather armband on his bulging left bicep.

“So two tops can have fun,” I say matter of factly, taping on my neoprene version, also on my not quite as bulging as his left bicep. “Who ends up on the bottom bunk is a matter of luck and timing.”

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Civil War Fantasy and My New Book, “For The Love of Samuel”

“For The Love of Samuel” is my latest work of erotic gay romance, a story of love lost and love found, set in contemporary New York City and Fort Lauderdale. After a series of romantic missteps, Billy Veleber, a fifty one year old aging gay man living in Manhattan, is given the chance at eternal youth and meeting the love of his life through the magical prowess of the dog tag of a long dead Civil War soldier, Samuel Evans, the “Samuel” of my title.

So where did l get this idea from?

Well, l’ve been an amateur Civil War buff since l was a teenager and read a magazine article, “If the South Had Won the Civil War.” It wasn't the battle strategies as much as the war’s larger-than-life qualities that intrigued me. Over the years, l’ve been to Civil War battlefields, both North and South, including Gettysburg, have visited the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, PA, and The Museum of The Confederacy in Richmond, collected numerous books on the subject, became a devotee of Matthew Brady who created war photography, subscribed for many years to “Civil War” magazine, and have collected numerous memorabilia, works of art, and trinkets depicting the great conflict of The War Between The States

In my readings l discovered two little known facts: that the idea of dog tags originated with the Civil War on a haphazard basis with soldiers having their names and infantries engraved on coins; and that Walt Whitman, the celebrated author - though not in his time - of “Leaves of Grass” who led an openly gay life for his day, served as a volunteer nurse at the Armory Hospital in Washington, D.C., where he cared for injured and dying Union soldiers.

I used the dog tag, Whitman’s hospital service, the romance of the valiant soldier, and other facts from Whitman’s personal life and combined them with that eternal theme of humanity - the quest for everlasting life - to come up with the fantasy premise of my novel: that certain dog tags were bestowed with the life force of their long dead owners and, provided its present day wearer had or had had love in his life, these magical relics would return their wearer physically to the age of the soldier whose dog tag he now possessed died. Most Civil War casualties died in their twenties from infection, the result of their war wounds.

When my story opens in 2012 in Manhattan’s West Village, Billy’s life is one train wreck. His long-time lover and mentor, the older Gus, has been fallen by a stroke, abruptly ending his career as one of Manhattan's leading neurosurgeons; and the hospital Billy worked at as its marketing director has gone bankrupt, leaving him to take a lowly copywriter’s job at a two bit ad agency.

Billy goes for a job interview in Chicago where he hopes Gus and he can start new lives; and to attempt to rekindle an affair with his former meth head lover Mitch who now lives there with his enabling parents. But both his interview and reunion with Mitch, a hopeless addict, go nowhere.

Killing time before his flight back home, Billy visits a thrift shop in Halstead in the heart of Chicago's Boystown where Tad, its young clerk who suffers from cerebral palsy, recites the magical history of the dog tag he himself wears after Billy tells him of his own plight.

“You sound like an educated, sophisticated guy. You ever hear of Walt Whitman?” asks Tad.

“Sure. Leaves of Grass. He was gay “

“Yea, but what most people don't know was that he served as a nurse during the Civil War in the hospitals in D C. where he lived at the time working for the government. And some of these dying soldiers he took care of him gave him their medallions - ”

“Their dog tags -”

“Yea, their dog tags as a thank you for taking care of them, many of them just before they died. Well, good old Walt had a handsome Irish lover, a trolley car conductor named Peter Doyle who Walt left a few of these medallions to when he died in 1892.”

“Okay. And ...” I say waiting for the punch line.

“Doyle had a couple of fuck buddies, Horace and Gustave. He gave them two of the medallions, and an amazing thing happened. When they wore the medallions they gradually became - became young again, the age the soldier whose medallion they wore died.”

“Fuck!”

“They didn't give you eternal life but as long as you wore them and you had love in your life, eternal youth was yours till the day you died.”

“Fucken unbelievable. But how does that connect with you and your lover David?”

“Well, these medallions were passed down from one pair of gay lovers to the next for generations. Most were nameless, but then they were those like Oscar Wilde, Noel Coward and Tennessee Williams who used the medals only on occasion because they had public personas to become young men for their own young men. Who knows, maybe these experiences inspired them to write Dorian Gray and Sweet Bird of Youth. Then there was Rock Hudson who hoped they would cure him of AIDS. You know how that ended. How my David came about them he never told me but he was convinced the spell they held would somehow cure me. You see, most people with CP don't make it to their fifties. All you see is my withered leg but there’s a lot of other shit going on inside me the docs can't fix.”

“But you look, you look like you’re twenty - “

“Twenty one to be exact. The age my soldier Samuel Evans died. Dave’s medallion belonged to a soldier who died at twenty two. So we put them on, and within a few days we were young again. Young with Dave’s trust fund and we thought time forever after.”

“But it didn't cure you of your CP.”

“No it didn't, and that devastated David more than me…I tinkered with fixing people’s laptops just to keep my brain occupied but Dave, Dave lost all ambition and took to drugs. Heroin.”

Tad’s eyes begin to tear up.

“We were together ten beautiful years when Dave just couldn't deal with losing me, my CP biological clock was running down, and one day I came home to find he had OD’d. He left a simple note, ‘It’s better this way.’”

I begin crying too.

“I was ready to OD myself but couldn't … So I came here about three months ago and took this job…Now the docs can't do much more for me and I’m constantly in pain. Billy, I turned fifty this May. It’s time I gave up my medallion to someone who can benefit from it, maybe better than Dave and I ever did.”

Tad lifts his medallion from around his neck, gets up from his stool and, walking ever so slowly to me, his face grimaced in agony, grabs my hand and places it in my palm.

“Someone with love in their life. Someone like you.”

After several plot twists, Billy puts on the dog tag and begins his strange and fascinating odyssey as a young virile gay man, and explores “For The Love of Samuel” for himself.

Meet the Author

RP Andrews spent most of his life in New York City as a public relations executive before relocating to Fort Lauderdale in 2002, where he enjoyed a brief second career teaching writing at a local university.

All his works of erotic gay fiction and non-fiction are available at amazon.com.

His first work of erotic gay fiction, a collection of edgy short stories called “Basic Butch,” was originally published by San Francisco-based GLBT Publishers in 2008. Basic Butch features characters who go down life paths that, in the end, they wish they had never explored.

His latest works of serious gay fiction include:

“The Czar of Wilton Drive,” the story of Jonathan Antonucci, a twenty-one-year- old, barely-out-the-closet gay man from suburban New York who overnight finds himself a multimillionaire, thanks to a bequest by his late gay uncle. Uncle Charlie has unexpectedly died of a heart attack, leaving him the sole owner of several of the most successful bars in Wilton Manors, Fort Lauderdale’s gay ghetto, making Jonathan the Czar of Wilton Drive.

Flying down to Lauderdale to claim his bequest, Jon encounters Uncle Charlie’s dubious friends and business associates, and is immediately submerged in Lauderdale’s scene of unbridled sex and heavy drugs. He also discovers his great uncle’s memoirs which reveal truths not only about Jon’s own past but also what may have really happened to his uncle. In the end, Jon is torn between avenging Uncle Charlie’s death or loving the man responsible for it.

“Not In It For The Love,” set at the turn of the new millennium. Josh, a young street-smart Florida drifter is snatched from his dead-end existence as a male hustler in a cheap Key Largo motel by Bishop, a Wall Street power broker who sets him up as his trophy boy in Manhattan society.

There, Josh, after leading a promiscuous lifestyle within New York City’s gay sub-culture, meets Hylan, a young, bi-racial, down-on-his luck, wheelchair-bound musician who awakens in Josh what love can be between two men. But their chance at happiness and the lives of those around them are forever changed by 9/11.

“Buy Guys,” published in 2015, is the story of Blaze and Pete, two handsome young drifters with nothing and nothing to lose. Blaze convinces Pete, who is falling in love with him, to leave dreary New Jersey and lead free and easy lives as male prostitutes in sunny Fort Lauderdale. Blaze, however, soon pulls Pete into a much larger, more dangerous scheme, a scheme that eventually threatens to destroy them both.

RP Andrews’ daily social commentary blog on gay life in America has been running since 2010 at str8gayconfessions.com, and a second edition collection of these commentaries is available as an e-book on amazon.com. Confessions of a Str8Gay Man is RP Andrews’ unvarnished, unorthodox views of Modern Gay America which are often counter to today’s political correct gay media.

In addition, there is “Furry Man’s Journal,” his erotic memoirs as a hirsute gay man as told through his experiences with the dozen iconic men in his life.

For more info, visit eroticgayromancebyrpandrews.com.